Equals and serialized copy

Question

I have an container that can contains any kinds of other objects and I ignore their nature. The only restriction I put is that those object must be Serializable.
I have implmeneted a clone() method that make a deep copy with serialization. (See http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/JDCTechTips/2001/tt0410.html )
Now I want to be able to compare the two objects with equals (and with hashcode). Can I use the serialized value of my object to test the equality? I means return true iff the serialized byte[] contains the same bytes, and computes a hashCode from the serialized byte array?
Asked otherwise, do we have the garantee of the next assertion:
equal (this.serialize().serialize() , this.serialize())where serialize and equal are
class A
    private synchronized byte[] serialize()
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream(5000);
        ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos);
        oos.writeObject(this);
        byte[] result = baos.toByteArray();
        oos.close();
        return result;
    private static equal(byte[] a, byte[] b)
        if (a.length!=b.length) return false;
        for (int i=0;i<a.length;i++) if (a!=b[i]) return false;
return true;

Answer 1

Let's forget the problem transient field and asume the
those fields are not used in the equality comparison.
I thing I have found a case were it will not work.
Imagine that the object I serialize is a B-Tree. I
imagine that even if two objects are equals, it's
possible that they have two differents tree structure
and thus a 'naive' serialization will give two
different byte[].
Very true. I would not go as far as call it 'naive', rather an efficient serialization would cause this as the tree structure would be traversed differently.
I'm I wrigth or does it exist a specification that
impose something like
a.equals(b) <=> equal(a.serialize(),b.serialize())?No, there is nothing in any specification that imposes that the serialized version of the objects byte-stream is equal if their equals method returns true. I could change the serialVersionUID without changing any other class and your byte-stream would differ, even though the internal structure is retained. Serialization is just to serialize objects and to have a way to read them back into objects again.
That was why I asked the initial question, which was why you need this functionality? yes, I am still curious
Regards,
Peter Norell